22 Nov
2022
22 Nov
'22
7:46 p.m.
On Nov 22, 2022, at 12:25 PM, Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Well... Yes, it is a true statement that DAP V5.6 is showing the list of months in upper
case (pages 63 and 64), so no disagreement there.
On the other hand, nowhere in the specification do I find any mention of either an UPPER
or lower case requirement for any character string and that is something I would have
expected if it were an explicit requirement. Historically the DEC systems that I used
(OS-8, RSTS/E, RSX, VMS, Tops-%0, Etc.) were largely case insensitive and that was my
expectation.
For RSTS/E at least, that's often true in the later versions, not so much in the early
ones. And it requires work to do case-insensitive matching, which was made easier in a
later RSTS/E version (V5 or V6 I think) with a string transformation function in
Basic-Plus. Before then, e.g., in RSTS V4, being case insensitive was a major hassle and
unlikely to be practiced consistently.
As for protocols, that's different from user interfaces. If there is a list of values
you should assume that's the list, and not rely on fuzzy matching unless explicitly
mentioned in the document. Unlike RFCs, DECnet specs should be treated as exact and
complete, because by and large they are.
paul